Archive for January, 2018

I’ve been training at Kirkstall leisure centure for a few months. However, since January it’s been rammed. 9-10 people per lane, which is just too many to get a proper workout.

So, I decided to give The Edge at Leeds University a go. I’ve only been twice but so far it has been a success. Here’s why.

It’s open all of the time

Kirkstall has specific sessions. For example, I used to go to the 12:00 to 13:30 session. Most of the time the pool is closed, or something else is happening, so you can’t go. You have to wait for the specific sessions.

At The Edge, the pool is open almost all of the time. There are a few sessions such as water polo or canoeing where they close the whole pool. However, for most events, they just close a few lanes and keep the rest of the pool open.

You can swim for ages

At the end of a session at Kirkstall, you get kicked out. At The Edge, you can swim until you get bored.

It’s bigger

They have eight lanes. They’re half the width of Kirstall’s three, but it feels a much better way to do it as it reduces the number of people per lane. They have multiple slow lanes, for example. And a double lane at the end if you would prefer that.

It’s deeper

Kirkstall goes from 0.8 metres to 1.6 metres. 80cm of water is not enough for an adult. It’s a family place so I understand why they do it. But I can stand up, on flat feet, at any point in the pool.

The Edges goes from 1.2 metres to 2.0 metres. Their floor can go up and down so sometimes they bring it to 0.9 metres in the shallow end. But even then the whole thing is deeper, and that is only if you go to the morning sessions. The rest of the time it is much better.

It’s cheaper

Off-peak, The Edge costs £4.50. That’s the price the public play, let alone if you’re a member of the university. At Kirkstall it is £4.90. There is no off-peak price because nobody in Kirstall has a job.

They have hair dryers

They might be rubbish, but The Edge does have hair dryers that do work eventually.

The lockers are bigger

They have these big square lockers that are much wider than most places. This makes it much easier to squeeze your bag into.

It feels like not a lot has happened in January. But it has been a busy month. Primarily because most of my Christmas and early January was taken up with revision for exams.

It’s not like undergraduate where we had them stacked on top of each other: we only had four to do. But you can’t get away with undergraduate level answers, either.

We also had an essay deadline. This fell on the first day of teaching for semester two. However, I submitted it at noon the day before, giving me a good 17 hours of relaxation between the two semesters.

It also feels like an anachronism that I’ve done all of this work: include deadlines in November and December, and we’re still waiting for results from the lot of them. I understand why marking takes a long time, but I’m part of the social media-obsessed instant generation. Basically, I don’t want to put in any work for semester two if I have already failed.

Recently, we finally found a long-sought-after commodity in Leeds. Blood. They sell it by the bag at the international supermarket.

“What do you do with a bag of blood?” you ask. Why, make blood pancakes, of course.

I was a little skeptical, I think partially because of Elina’s reassurance that I didn’t have to eat all of them. Having tasted them, I would describe them as okay. They taste a lot like Scotch pancakes and go well with lingonberry jam.

This isn’t about alcohol at all, of which I had some, but about sporty things that happened (or did not happen) in January.

In November, I injured my foot during a run. It didn’t seem too bad at the time but when the pain didn’t go away I knew something was up. So, I’ve been resting it since then and trying to build the strength back up in it.

I’m not sure whether it was worked or not. I’m still getting some pain when I run, but I’m not getting the pain first thing in a morning that I was. But maybe this will build up over time. It will be exciting (well, depressing) to find out.

This meant that I had to miss the Sir Titus Trot on 7 January. I was gutted. Less than a week into 2018 I had the chance to tick off one of my big fitness goals for the year: a sub-2 hour half marathon. Foot aside, I’m confident I could have hit that, especially in the chill of January and the flatness of the canal.

In another way, I’m proud of myself, though. It was an agonising two days after my doctor’s appointment, deciding whether “rest it completely” meant “rest it completely after your race on Saturday”. But, in the end, I managed to resist the temptation.

So, this has thrown my whole running plan off. I wanted to go on after the Sir Titus Trot and do more, but that’s all off the table now as well. The first three months of the year were a perfect time to get some running in at ideal temperatures before I move my focus to triathlon for the summer. Alas.

Bramham duathlon

Speaking of which, there was another Braham duathlon scheduled for Sunday 21 January. I was looking forward to using it as adversity training: racing it in the rain and the snow would give me confidence in my bike handling skills. Confidence which I want in case it rains in one of my A races for 2018.

Unfortunately, a survey of the bike course revealed it was too icy to race on, so the event had to be cancelled.

Tomorrow is the Middleton duathlon: let’s hope for better luck there.

Worfolk Limited has been producing awesome software for many years. Whether we are building web applications and mobile apps for customers or launching them ourselves, I take a lot of pride in making them the best apps they can be, both from a user’s perspective and by leaving the client in the best position going forward.

That quality and attention to detail is now expanding to wearable devices, too.

This starts with Garmin devices, and I’m pleased to announce we’ve launched our first app, Mindful Moments. It gives you timely reminders to live in the present. If you have any of the Garmin watches that can download apps from the Garmin IQ Store (Forerunner 230+, Fenix, Vivo), you can try it for yourself.

It’s written in Monkey C, the version of Java that Garmin devices run on. Going forward, we’ll be developing more apps and making these services available to clients, too.

Back in August, I wrote about how I had to finally retire my Nike Air Retaliate 2 running trainers with a pair of Nike Air Zoom Elite 8s.

They have served me in the short term. I went sub-50 in the 2017 Abbey Dash, for example, and have set a bunch of personal bests at Parkrun.

However, they’re also just a bit too small. They cram my toes in a little too much and this, I think, is contributing to blistering on longer runs. So, after five months of being in denial about the size issue, I decided I had to face up to it and start another journey of trying to find some running shoes.

I started at Up & Running, who put me on a treadmill and pronounced my an overpronator. This may well be true, although it’s not really a problem I have noticed. And seemed to miss the problem that I came in with. They sold me a pair of Aiscs GT 2000s.

I did not get on with these. So, I took them back and traded them for a pair of Saucony Guide ISOs.

These were definitely better. But still not perfect. The toe guard cut into the top of my foot. And with a £120 price tag, I felt that something I didn’t like as much as my Nikes probably wasn’t a keeper. So, I went to the old reliable Nike Factory Shop and to see what they had to offer. I came away with a pair of Nike Vomeros.

Unfortunately, at this point, I strained a ligament in my ankle so I couldn’t run for a week or two. My kitchen table looked like a shoe shop for a week until I could test them all out. After much thought, including trying every combination on the treadmill with one shoe on my right foot and one on my left, I decided not of them were right.

The Vomeros are Nike’s heavily cushioned shoe and that was annoying the hell out of me. So, I took them all back.

I had past Up & Running’s two-week return window, but they were kind enough to take them back anyway. So, I now think they are lovely people.

After all of this, I went down to the Nike Outlet Store at Junction 32. An outlet store is different to a factory store. How you may ask? The Factory Store has lots of stock of the latest models. The Outlet Store has a wider but far more random collection of stuff. And all of the shoe box lids are ripped off.

This is the end game of capitalism: do you want to pay £20 more for your trainers to get a shoe box lid? I really like the orange shoe boxes. In the end, the Yorkshireman got the better of me and I decided that no, I didn’t want to pay £20 for the shoe box. I came away with a pair of Nike Air Zoom Spans.

These have some cushioning in, which will be better for the longer runs. But, more importantly, it is pretty stiff as cushioning goes. Therefore, I’m hoping I can tolerate it because you still get a responsive ride.

They also have more support than my Zoom Elites, and Solereview.com said it was comparable to the Saucony Guides, so if I do need a bit more support than I was getting, hopefully, these will provide it.

On New Year’s Eve, I took part in my first sportive. It was a 50km spin around Selby to raise money for the Children’s Heart Surgery Fun based at the LGI. Several hundred people turned out for it and the event raised £2,000.

As my first sportive, I didn’t really know what to expect. The race HQ was Squire’s Biker Cafe. It’s basically a pub with food options and seemingly unlimited parking. Both the pub and the organisers, Sportive HQ, did a great job in running everything. It was clear what was going on, there were no big cues and everything ran smoothly.

Plus, the photos they took were available for free. In contrast, you often pay £20-30 at events like Run For All (well, I don’t pay that, obviously, because I’m from Yorkshire).

I made great progress for the first 35km, averaging 24.6kmph. My theories that I was much faster on quiet roads than I was on the canal or the endless traffic lights of inner Leeds was all coming true.

However, for the final 15km, as we headed back to complete the loop, it became clear why I was making such great time: a big headwind, which had presumably been a tailwind on the way out. In the end, my pace clocked in at 22.1kmph, a full .4kmph below where I need to be for triathlon.

It makes you realise just how easy they have it when riding in the peloton in the Tour de France and makes what Thomas De Gendt does even more impossible.

I enjoyed the group riding. My friend Bogdan was riding it, too, and having caught me up at the feed station we rode back together.

I’m looking forward to doing more. Especially once it warms up so that I can take my hat off. I think I lost a few kilometres per hour by having the world’s tallest head.

We rang in the new year with our customary house party. Our 10th annual one, as it happens.

I don’t have a group picture this year. I didn’t have one for the Manchester trip, either. All of this living in the moment nonsense is really damaging the quality of my blog. I knew that trying to enjoy life was going to end badly, one way or another.

This year, the three of us were joined by Norman, Chris, Cara, Lauren, Gabriele, Tim and Kearny.

Last year, we made a series of predictions for the year ahead. Most of them we were incorrect about. But a good ones: there was a general election (Cara) and the Patriots did win the Super Bowl (Norman). We’ve now made a fresh set for 2018.

This year, that proved impossible. We went to Makro to buy the biggest ham we could, but they topped out at 6kg. Venla now weighs 11kg, so we’re not even close. That is probably for the best, though. It takes us a full week to eat through 6kg of gammon.

We outdid ourselves with toilet rolls, too.

There was a big difference in Venla between her birthday two months ago, and Christmas. She wasn’t that interested in unwrapping at her birthday but now she delights in it.